Inside the room stood the sa detective who had escorted her in, along with two uniford policen, one stationed just inside the door, the other waiting outside. The space itself was cold and clinical, the kind of room that swallowed voices and left little room for comfort. From a single glance, AiLin could tell that most of the guests from the party had already been questioned. Only she had been left out.
Perhaps they had seen how shaken she appeared earlier. Or perhaps, as was often the case, family mbers were treated as the closest suspects, so they must be handled with more caution to be observed carefully, thus why she was interrogated last.
And if that were true, then the Jiang family would soon follow her into rooms like this one.
The mont AiLin sat down, the detective who had been glancing at his phone turned off the screen and placed it neatly on the table. He took the seat across from her and smiled again, that sa polite, unsettling expression.
"My na is Sung FanXin," he said calmly. "You can call FanXin." His eyes lingered on her face as though searching for sothing buried beneath her composure. "I rember your old case very well, Miss AiLin. The one where you burned down a house, with a servant still inside. A servant who was pregnant."
AiLin t his gaze without flinching. The look in her eyes was neither anger nor distress, but sothing far more unsettling in its restraint.
Calmness. A look of utter calmness.
That was all FanXin could see on her face.
Usually either only a murderer would be so calm, because usually they would believe deeply in their heart that their work had been clean and that no one would know what they have done.
But FanXin knew better than just reading one’s body language to know whether they are truly the killer or not.
Especially when he had handled AiLin before and back then too, she was calm. Calm, at such a very young age.
"You must have handled countless cases," AiLin replied evenly, snapping him from his daze. "Yet you rember mine so clearly?" A faint curve touched her lips, not quite a smile. "I hope it’s not because I was your first case."
He let out a soft chuckle. "No. It was my fifteenth." He leaned back slightly. "I don’t usually rember every case by number or detail. But how could I forget yours? Years ago, I saw a young girl dragged away in handcuffs, rushed into an ambulance. Behind her stood a burning house... and what we believed to be concrete evidence."
"Concrete evidence," AiLin repeated quietly, a faint scoff slipping past her lips. "I was bleeding out to death. Do you really think I could use my energy to burn such a house? Don’t you find it odd how no one also noticed how I was around the place?"
"I rember that all the servants were on a leave."
"Yes, what a coincidence. The day when the house is burned, everyone was gone and only I was there."
Hearing her pointed note, FanXin smiled, "I wasn’t here to talk about the old case."
"Because you are scared of the truth?" She asked him back yet the detective seed unshaken.
"I can tell that you are dissatisfied with the old case."
"Dissatisfied?" She snapped back.
"I am also dissatisfied," FanXin answered at once with a sigh, "I know what you are thinking, how everything didn’t make sense and how upset you are by the choices that led you to be brought to prison. Back then, my voice wasn’t enough to really look into what had happened but this ti, I wouldn’t want to make the sa mistake."
Hearing this she frowned, "You are saying that soone had tampered with it and that you couldn’t do anything about it?"
"But that doesn’t an that I could allow this fact to sway this current investigation. Every case is vital," FanXin looked back at her eyes and reading those gaze, she still find it suspicious. "Can you tell what happened the last ti you saw Madam LinLin?"
She slowly exhaled, recounting everything, "We had to talk about the past..." she delved into what she had said, how Grandmother LinLin had apologized to her after giving her the inheritance for standing quiet after the abuses she had gone through. She delved a little more on how Grandmother LinLin said she was going to expose sothing about Mrs Jiang.
"Is that so," FanXin humd as he noted everything down and scratched his head. "Do you know Miss AiLin? In every interrogation, we would likely check one’s witness statent to the rest of the statent in that sa place. But do you know that the Jiang Family insists that Madam LinLin had been instigated or blackmailed by you to give her inheritance?"
She blinked, "I expected that."
"When three or more statents are the sa, your only statent wouldn’t be credible."
Crossing her arms she sighed, "So you want to say that you don’t trust what I’m saying, is it?"
"No," FanXin answered, "I want to tell you that it seems that this isn’t the work of just one person. I doubt you really have the motif to kill Madam LinLin. Your Alibi is also quite strong but since you were the last one who saw her, you’re quite high on the list of suspect."
She stopped, "You doubt that I have the motive to kill Grandmother?"
"Yeah," he looked back at her, "If you have successfully blackmailed her and got the inheritance, why do you need to kill her? Your goal is the inheritance, not her life. She had given it to you, which ant that you have gotten all your inheritance thus you have no more reason in taking her life."
She blinked again at him and smiled. So for the first ti soone was actually using their brain. She found it funny that she was startled soone had trusted her, funny as it shouldn’t have been only one person to trust her.
"Then may I ask your relationship with Mrs Jiang, Jiang ngYao, and Jiang NianNian? Your relationship and their dynamic with Madam LinLin. From what I heard during your argunt, you knew quite well."
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